The other is about the specific case of the Zuiyo-Maru and the carcass the vessel hauled aboard in 1977. This article is by Glen Kuban who is scheduled to be a guest on an upcoming episode of MonsterTalk.http://monsterscience.org/wordpress/?p=121

I hope you enjoy these articles and if you have comments this is a good place for them.

I thought it was nice to finally see someone state that plesiosaurs did not hold their heads and necks out of the water in the swan-like way attributed to modern lake monsters. Beyond this, the simple reality is that real animals are only just so elusive. The snow leopard is extremely elusive, and lives in a very remote area, but we have carcasses and video and all kinds of information on it. An animal that is always being spotted only from a great distance, and known only by blurry photos and dubious eyewitness stories, for decades on end, is not a real animal. That situation smacks of folklore and fakery.

New animal species are being discovered all the time, but they're usually small and not "monsterous" enough to excite cryptozoologists or the public. Bipedal apes and lake monsters, the superstars of the cryptozoological quest, are virtually certain to be mythical. Hard evidence would have been found by now. The entire length of Loch Ness was the subject of a sustained organized surface observation during daylight hours for a period of ten years! The lake bottom was dredged for longer than that. Little tid bits like that are forgotten, while dubious eyewitness sightings are rehashed perpetually. That's a lame way of dealing with any subject of inquiry.

idoubtit wrote:All that you said is valid, which is why many fans of cryptids have gone down the supernatural path. Natural means of finding such animals fail. To support their belief, they must go beyond nature.

Simply dispensing with the belief altogether is apparently not an option, then.

Sure it is Bart! I was a confirmed believer in quite a few cryptids when I was younger. As I got older, did more research & got educated, the beliefs went away almost completely. There are still a few cryptids (generally small, ecologically sensible) that I think may exist though none are the big name ones.

But I gave up looking for an honest politician or ethical lawyer decades ago.

Right. Many, but not all, will entertain supernatural explanations. I particularly liked the story in "Three Men Seeking Monsters" by Nick Redfern. Fun.

If you chose to stick to natural explanations, at some point you have to decide if the witness is really mistaken, lying or being hoaxed. That's tough to accept because people often seem so sincere about what they encountered. And they "know what they saw".

idoubtit wrote:...people often seem so sincere about what they encountered. And they "know what they saw".

It would make an interesting study. Do you know if anyone has looked into this area before?

The essential book to read is Elizabeth Loftus' Eyewitness Testimony. I love that book. She's one of my heros. She took a lot of heat to say things that her research said was valid, though they were hard to take.

busterggi wrote:Sure it is Bart! I was a confirmed believer in quite a few cryptids when I was younger. As I got older, did more research & got educated, the beliefs went away almost completely. There are still a few cryptids (generally small, ecologically sensible) that I think may exist though none are the big name ones.

But I gave up looking for an honest politician or ethical lawyer decades ago.

You just wrote about my entire life in this response. lol I definitely use to believe more when I was younger and uneducated, but we all have to grow up and start to have common sense, well hopefully. Can't speak for all, but that's another whole subject in itself